Reasons why you might want to accept an LA visit:
a) You are separated from the child’s other parent and that parent does not approve, or is dubious about home education.
b) You are in the throes of Children Act proceedings and home education has been raised by the other parent, or by CAFCASS.
c) The local authority (LA) has something to offer (very few have) such as: exam fees, resources which you re unable to access otherwise (most resources can be obtained for free, with help from other home educators) and those things are of value to your family.
d) Your child is a foster child.e) Your child is a recently adopted child.
Reasons why you might want to decline an LA visit:
1. Principle: Education is the duty of the parent, not the LA, as is feeding, clothing, potty training and nurturing. Accepting a visit is no different to asking an officer of the State to come into your home and go through the fridge and cupboards.
2. Protection of rights: If we do not insist that officers of the State comply with the law we erode our legal rights, as the accepted ‘norm’ quickly becomes incorporated into accepted practise for all. We need a significant number of people to insist on their rights, in order to protect those rights for all. LAs need to accept that choosing not to have a visit, or meeting, is not an indication of concern.
3. Vagaries of assessment: No matter how pleasant, professional and accepting the LA officer is currently, they may well not be the person making he final judgement on your education provision. That could be a manager who has never met you, but decides that they have ‘concerns’ because you did not mention a certain factor.
4. Consistency: the LA officer you meet may be exceptionally pleasant, understand your methods and be someone you enjoy meeting. That person will not be there forever, or a colleague may come next time who is the opposite in approach. Staff are made redundant, get ill, retire, or change role.
5. Judgmental approach: You need to be clear that the LA officer’s primary purpose for wanting to visit you could easily be that they want to gain access to your home and family as a means of effectively making a social services assessment of you, as a parent. Very few LA officers have training in home education, all of them have safeguarding training. They could easily decide that they dislike you, the way you speak, the fact that you have a large family, are a single parent, are of different ethnicity to them (yes, sadly that happens), have lifestyle choices that are not mainstream, or for many other reasons. LA officers are very far from ‘non-judgemental’ and the visit could very quickly be followed by referral to children’s social services for reasons which would never otherwise result in them being involved with your family.
6. Judgemental approach 2: The LA officer may not understand your child’s needs, or personality. They may have very set ideas of how a child should learn and what they should achieve at what age. If you follow the National Curriculum and have a strongly structured approach, this may not be a problem, but if you are less structured it frequently is. Even the most structured can have problems with LA officers insisting on set hours, tutors, desks and chairs, timetables and set hours.
7. Diverting from education: By inviting other people to judge your home education you run the risk of causing problems for yourself and your children, as you focus on what you think someone else wants you to be doing.
8. Qualification: More properly lack of qualification. Most home education officers are former teachers, with the second highest number coming from a social work role. Parents may feel that LA officers are therefore unqualified to make any assessment of home education and some may even be unable to recognise other forms of education or even when learning is taking place. A good analogy would be to insist that CofE vicars inspect Jewish the religious observances of Jewish families, or vice versa.
9. The expert: Many home educators subscribe to the view that learning is a natural process, which is different for everyone and that it is only the child who can assess the education. As parents we can intimately observe and facilitate, but the learning is the ultimately the child’s. For many the vast majority of learning is done in the child’s head. This is often concerning for those trained in a system where all children are expected to do the same thing, in the same way and at the same time. The state system promotes early reading and written recitation of facts, so if you choose other means you are working in a completely different work view.
10. Privacy: Home education is an intimate, personal experience. It is integral to everyday life. It involves private spaces in the home, personal conversations, about your day to day life, friendships and aspirations. Many people do not want to have those parts of their lives exposed to a stranger.
11. Safety: For SEN children and children coming out of school, having had a bad experience, the visit could well be experienced as highly stressful and invasive, not least because the LA officer represents the system that failed them. Many parents consider it their duty to safeguard their children from such invasion of their personal space.
12. Special needs: The LA officer will have little or no understanding of your child’s individual needs. They may have sight of the child’s EHCP, but that tells them very little about the child, apart from what others judged about the child at some past date. That officer may judge you and your child and find you lacking, based on their own mistaken ideas about your child. Very few LA officers have training in SEN and those that do, have very little.
13. Negativity: The LA officer may well judge your education negatively, for a wide variety of reasons, including that they did not notice your child’s resources, they were not concentrating when you mentioned achievement, or simple lack of understanding. It is much less likely that you will omit something when writing a report, as you are not ‘on the spot’.
14. GDPR and data protection: The LA officer will often ask you to sign forms, frequently unseen save for the signature box. These forms often contain a generalised consent for the La officer to share and access your data. Many parents would not wish their data to be accessed, or shared in this way. It is very hard to resist a persuasive person who has put themselves in a position of control over you and by the time you contact them to withdraw consent, it may well be too late.
15. Nothing to offer: Very few LAs have anything to offer to you. They will usually phrase their visit as to offer support and advice, but the home education community has thousands of highly experienced, committed and supportive families who can provide far more relevant advice than the LA officer can. There are also significant numbers of free and readily accessed online resources which your LA cannot offer you, but you can find online. The only ‘support’ that the majority of LAs offer is an intrusive visit.
16. Misrepresentation: Many experienced home educating families will confirm that LA officers frequently misrepresent their role and their powers. It is not unusual for LA officers to seek to disempower parents and to manipulate them. This is far easier for them to do in person, than in writing.
17. Fairness: The public expects schools to be inspected because the public funds those schools through state taxation. The State has a right to inspect those schools, because the State is responsible for them. Even so, those schools are only inspected every 3-6 years and yet home educating families are asked to allow inspection annually, or more often. Many parents question why they should be held to higher standards than schools are and information sought from them more frequently. By providing information in writing, you minimise the effect the ‘inspection’ has on you and your family.
18. Normalisation: By normalising ‘inspection’ by state officials, you legitimise the impression that home educating families are somehow different, less acceptable, dangerous, or abusive. Many parents would question why they should be expected to help to do that.
19. Personal reasons: You may have many reasons why you prefer to not accept a stranger into your home. Mine will not be yours, but both will be valid.
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